Category Archives: logs

Week 5 log

April 29th


  • 1hr of peer review

  • 3 hrs of reading Lord Byron

  • 1hr writing

  • 1hr meditative thinking


April 30th


  • 1hr  Poetry Reading and Interpretation

  • 1.5hr  Seminar: As poetry recycles neurons in conversations between Marjorie Perloff’s poets and Neuro

  • 1.5hr Guest Poet: Lucia Perillo

  • 2hrs reading The Last Myth and My Poets


May 1st


  • 1.5hrs Writing Workshop w/TESC program Methods of Mathematical Physics

  • 3hrs reading My Poets and Neuro


May 2nd


  • 1.5hrs  “Doing Goethean Science: Your Poet”  Weekly explorations of themes from Neuro in relationship to the poet of student’s choice modeled on Maureen McLane’s My Poets

  • 2hrs of reading Lord Byrons compleat works

  • 1hr of reading Lord Byron and the Ruins of Paridise


May 3rd


  • 4hrs on the old hilltop ward park exploring the grounds and finding some of the most fantastic views of the mountains I’d ever seen. took photos, wrote some quick bits of poetry. All in Lakewood, WA.

  • 0.5hr in steilacoom exploring the tiny place before we left

  • 2 hr writing and meditating at old docks in Hoquiam, WA


May 4th


  • 3hrs on Lynda.com working on Photoshop Techniques

  • 4hrs shifting through photos from yesterdays trip and editing them in PS CS6, utilizing new things learned through Lynda.com


May 5th


  • 3hrs reading Nuro and Perloff

  • 1hr typing up work from journal

  • 2hrs working on photoshop work

  • .5hrs doing wordpress work

Total Hours this week: 42 hours

V – Log Week 5 (The year of the Water Snake/Feminine Laughter)

This week has been focused around snakes and what they represent, the historical context surrounding them that have to do with the rise of the alphabet and the decline of goddess worship.  I played with clay and thought about the metamorphic phases that are represented by the dark birthing the light, i played with words in clay and clay shaping words, light shaping darkness and darkness shaping light.  The feminine as plant and vegetable was thought alot about, along with the rebirth and constant change that the snake or ouroboros represents.

April 29th

Pottery Studio (playing with Poppy)  – 4 hours

Reading “The vegetative soul”-  1 hour

April 30th

In class – 3 hours

Lucia Perillo reading – 1.5 hours

May 1st

Reading “Vegetative Soul” – 2 hours

May 2nd

reading “centering” 2 hours

writing mind-term eval – 2 hours

Plant profile on Plantain -2 hours

Shlain – 2 hours, reading notes

Pottery in response to centering/”Books of Ice” article, 2 hours

May 3rd

Herbal class – leaves of berries/horsetail -5 hours

May 4th

“The Alphabet Versus the Goddess” Shlain – 2 hours

“Women Who Run with the Wolves” Heat, sexuality and snakes-1 hour

Pottery studio, playing with herbs, latin and light in clay – 3 hours

Mid quarter evaluation touch up – .5 hours

May 5th

Reading “The Alphabet Versus the Goddess” – 2 hours

Reading (In the sunshine!) Neuro Chapter 5 – 4 hours

Reading Response – 1 hour

Poetry – 2 hours

Total this week: 42 hours

E – Week 5 Log

Core Program – 20 Hours

The chapter from Neuro was absolutely amazing. It was easier for me to read, somehow, despite the fact that normally I find Rose a bit dense. Susan Howe is also an excellent writer. I love the fact that when I read her, I have to relax and kind of let it hit, to let all of the pieces gather. I find that when I read it, it doesn’t always make very much sense, but it makes much more sense when it is time for seminar. There were more hours this week than usual because I stayed for the guest speaker. There was also much more reading this week than usual, making for a much denser load. It was enjoyable work, but there was a lot of it.

Sunday – 4 hours

Tuesday – 6 hours

Wednesday – 4 hours

Thursday – 4 hours

How to Survive Being Blessed – 20 Hours

The story continues to grow and grow. The rough draft got up to 62 pages and once again it’s going to get longer when I revise it. I couldn’t pull off the time lapse very well and I realized that there was a whole bunch of stuff I needed to put in so that there wouldn’t be plot holes. I’m starting to get into the parts that I know are going to be hard to write, about Mauri’s assault. I’m starting to get a little bit concerned that the only thing I’m going to be able to get finished is a copy of her story, but I am putting in the required hours and the story is more than a bit of a monster.

Monday – 5 hours

Tuesday – 6 hours

Wednesday – 8 hours

Thursday – 1 hour

Publishing – 10 Hours

I continued to do research on several of the publishers. That was tough work because they don’t always make the sites easy to navigate. It turns out that my story is not quite right for any of them, being about 3,000 words too long for all but one of them and 400 words short for that one. I will work on drafting my first cover letter, as well as a bio and a synopsis of my story, in time for my meeting with Sandra. She agreed to see me as long as there was flexibility was involved because of her busy schedule. Much of the work I can do independently so long as she is there as a touchstone  I can also email her as often as I need to. I’m looking forward to hearing about what she thinks of my story in our meeting on Wednesday.

Tuesday – 3 hours

Wednesday – 4 hours

Thursday – 3 hours

Total: 50

Cumulative total: 244

P – Week 4 Log

4-22-13:  1/2 MP, 1/2 Tai Ji, 2 House of Incest (reading & writing), 2 freewriting, 2 reading Body & City, 1 seminar pass

4-23-13:  1/2 MP, 1/2 Tai Ji, 2 Everything Being Is…, 3 writing, 2 House of Incest

4-24-13:  1/2 MP, 1/2 meditation, 2 Poetics of Space, 1 Place & Experience, 2 poetry workbook

4-25-13:  1/2 MP, 1/2 Tai Ji, 4 Neuro, 2 Body & City, 2 Perceptual Experience

4-26-13:  1/2 MP, 1/2 yoga, 4 Howe, 4 writing, 1/2 Poetry Observed

4-27-13:

4-28-13:  1/2 MP, 2 seminar pass, 2 WordPress

Total:  46 hours

P – Week 3 Log

4-15-13:  1/2 MP, 1/2 Bodystories, 3 Body & City, 3 Space and Place,

4-16-13:  1/2 MP, 1/2 yoga, 1 Space & Place, 1 active observation & notetaking, 2 reading Moodle handouts

4-17-13:  2 1/2 computer time (Moodle, blog, research), 1 voice notes, 3 writing poetry, 2 poetry workbook, 1/2 MP

4-18-13:  1/2 MP, 1/2 somatics, 2 Neuro, 2 Not Knowing, 2 seminar pass, 1 writing

4-19-13:  2.5 computer stuff, 1/2 MP, 3 writing, 2 photography

4-20-13:  1/2 MP, 2 House of Incest

4-21-13:  1/2 MP, 2 freewriting (experimenting with “fever dream” style in HOI), 3 Space & Place

Total:  44 Hours

P – Week 2 Log

Monday, 4-8-13:  1/2 MP, 1/2 Bodystories, 2 reading Space and Place, 2 freewriting, 2 internet research

Tuesday, 4-9-13:  1/2 MP, 1/2 Tai Ji, 4 hours fighting with WordPress, posting to Moodle, resizing photo for e-alphabet icon, trying to figure out how to upload MP3 to WordPress, 3 Perloff, 2 writing

Wednesday, 4-10-13:  1/2 MP, 1/2 making chart to keep track of hours, 1 notes from Perloff, 4 My ED, 2 writing by bonfire, 1 “Writing Poetry”

Thursday, 4-11-13:  1/2 MP, 1/2 porch Tai Ji, 2 Neuro, 2 “Writing Poetry”, 5 My ED close reading and notetaking

Friday, 4-12-13:  4 Neuro, 2 My ED, 1/2 MP, 1 free write, 1/2 yoga

Saturday, 4-13-13:  1 My ED, 2 Neuro, 1 writing

Sunday, 4-14-13:  1/2 MP, 1/2 Bodystories

Total:  49 hours (not bad for spending several days driving back and forth across the midwest and sitting in a truck in a pipeyard for several hours)

This week started off in Kentucky.  We were still hanging out at J’s house which had been empty for almost a year, fixing it up and trying to make it habitable.  While doing that we have been living half in the house, half in the trailer.  Kind of annoying and kind of fun at the same time…While getting the house ready, we’ve also been getting ready to move again in case he gets called to a job–usually very little notice–so we are also spring cleaning the trailer and making repairs to both his pickup and gigantic work truck.  As some of you know, I am a terrible procrastinator and tend to put my schoolwork off to the last minute, but J has been really good about reminding me to do some every day, he even set up a desk and chair on the patio so I can work outside when it’s nice.  On Thursday he decided to go to Illinois for the weekend, where he has family and business interests near the Iowa border.  On the drive to Illinois, I did a lot of reading and leaning out the window taking photographs, and J taunted me that I was going to drop my camera on the freeway (I didn’t).  We spent most of Friday driving back and forth between Iowa and Illinois, stopping at various pipeyards and mechanic shops while I sat in the truck doing my schoolwork, with my books spread all over the dash and my laptop on my knees.  For some strange reason I get a lot more work done in less than ideal environments than I do sitting at a desk.  We are probably driving to West Virginia on Monday to pick up even more work equipment, and then back to Kentucky for a few days to regroup.

P – Week 1 Log

Monday, 4-1-13:  1/2 hr morning pages, 2 reading Neuro, 1/2 roadside Tai Ji (I got some very strange looks from the truckers at the rest stop, and J made fun of me the rest of the day), 2 experiential geography (travel and active observation and notetaking)

Tuesday, 4-2-13:  1/2 hr morning pages, 1/2 meditation, 2 freewriting, 6 reading Eyes of the Skin and copious notetaking

Wednesday, 4-3-13:  2 hrs reading Space and Place

Thursday, 4-4-13:  1/2 MP (morning pages), 1/2 Bodystories, 2 notes, 3 re-reading Eyes of the Skine, 1 writing, 2 exploring town, photography, & notetaking

Friday, 4-5-13:  1/2 MP, 1/2 meditation, 1/2 recording frogs and birds, 4 blogging & online research, 2 writing

Saturday, 4-6-13:  1/2 MP, 1/2 med, 2 reading Writing Poems, 1 1/2 writing poems

Sunday, 4-7-13:  4 reading Neuro & My ED, 1 sem pass, 1/2 MP, 1/2 Tai Ji

Total:  41 hours

Hey you guys!  So my plan was originally to hang out with my friend J in the RV park in East Texas where he has been living the past few months, studying and acting as a platonic housewife in exchange for room and board.  He moves around a lot with his job, usually living in rural areas or small towns, and lives in a travel trailer.  But last week his plans changed unexpectedly and he told me that we were going to be doing some traveling instead.  Because my field study is on space and place and their effects on our consciousness, and because I secretly harbor the heart of a gypsy, this sounded even better than my original plan.

J picked me up on Friday at my mom’s house in Houston where I had been visiting for a few days.  We spent the night in his trailer in an RV park in Jacksonville, TX, then got up early on Saturday to get things ready to go to Kentucky where he inherited a house and wanted to go to check on things.  While we were prepping the truck and trailer, he informed me that I would be driving his pickup, pulling the travel trailer while he drove his big service truck.   I assumed that I would be doing some of the driving but was not really prepared for this.  I grew up with my father doing the same kind of work that J does and was accustomed to the sudden packing up and moving that comes with the lifestyle, but have never driven anything larger than a conversion van, so I was pretty scared.  He rode with me driving for a while, giving me pointers on turning and braking, and how to account for pulling a small house behind the me.  When I got a little more comfortable (I still had a death grip on the steering wheel, but my hands had stopped going numb), we stopped, parked the trailer, and went back for his service truck.  It took a lot longer to get to Texarkana than it should have, but we finally got there and stopped for the night in an RV park with hands-down the nicest bathroom I’ve ever seen at a campground.  We drove for the next two days, making a lot of stops, both to give me a break and to make some repairs on the vehicles.  We finally got to Kentucky on Tuesday morning.  Since then I have been doing a lot of reading, mostly The Eyes of the Skin, Space and Place, and the Tuesday texts, exploring the tiny nearby town, and helping clean up the house and acre of land it’s on.

We are in a fairly rural area, but with so many churches I don’t see how there are enough people to attend, unless they all go to more than one church every week.  Every time I have gone into town so far, someone stops me and asks what church I belong to, assuming that I am Pentecostal because of my long hair and dresses.  Needless to say, they are a little taken aback when I turn and they notice my facial piercings (more common in small towns than they used to be, but still not de rigeur) and dark eyeliner.  It’s kind of funny.

We don’t have any definite plans right now.  There is still some work to be done on the property, and J has business to attend to in Illinois, West Virginia, and New Mexico, as well as having a line on a job in Pennsylvania.  I am trying to learn to be more patient and to be comfortable with uncertainty, so I suppose not knowing where I will sleep tomorrow is good for me.

Houston, seen through a very dirty windshield.

Houston, seen through a very dirty windshield.

20130330_144248

Somewhere in Arkansas.

Welcome to Kentucky.

Welcome to Kentucky.

 

pi-trivet3

Pi week 4 log

Apr 21 – 27

3 hours – collecting resources and materials and programming eAlphabet page

4 hourse – Calculated Poetics

4 hours – reading Magic Mirror of M.C. Escher, Fractal Geometry of Nature, 

4 hours – listening to Radiolab

I spent the week preparing to launch into an in depth exploration of different math systems, scheduling out the next few weeks of the field study to dedicate time to each system.  This way, I will be versed enough to possibly teach the methods in class during my presentation week 10 and also gain enough background knowledge to see how it applies to my general topic of intuitive mathematics.  On the docket immediately is learning the Abacus as well as a brief history of its development.  But that is for next week.

I spent the week this week listening to various Radiolab episodes to hear good examples of storytelling narrative to use for my introduction, as a way to convey a lot of information yet push the narrative forward in an intriguing way.  I then set about writing the intro with the Sensing Boundaries of the Holdrege paper where I describe my personal experiences with math that led to my pursuing this field study question.

I also spent the week reformatting (or trying to reformat) my eAlphabet page with mixed success.  My poetry observed entries do not seem to be showing up, which is a bummer because they are great supplementary resources.

The book Number Sense arrived in the mail this week and I will launch into it over next week as it forms the second section that segways from the intro in my paper.   I read portions of Magic Mirrow of M.C. Escher and Fractal Geometry of Nature just to get my cogs turning.